Quotes About Ageism

Too often, older women are seen as victims, but I know lots of formidable women who have marvellous jobs as well as a full erotic life, and children and friends and family.

I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out.' Huh. As if.

When I was in my early twenties, parts would be written for women in their fifties, and I would get them. And now I'm in my early thirties, and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part?' I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it; it's the way things are.

'Senior Citizen' and 'Silver Surfer' are the new euphemisms. Unless you're a female presenter on TV, in which case you're ready for the knacker's yard at 35.

It's a tragedy for society to spend decades training people and then depriving them of work at some arbitrary age.

They want younger girls, not old ones like me, as heroines. This is the tragedy of Bollywood. It is male dominated.

Now that I've experienced ageism, I don't regard it as a bad thing. It's been a transition to something more exciting and maybe edgier.

I never weigh myself, but the brutal truth of television is that they don't employ old people or fat people.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one, let me tell you.

I am definitely not sitting down with Jason Whitlock because I don't think he is willing to learn. He is fat and 50. There ain't no changing the mind of a fat, 50-year-old person.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn't been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn't like what a woman her age is offered. That's a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn't work the other way around.

For any female actor, the age between 35 to 45 is treacherous. Filmmakers tell me, I am at that awkward age. No parts are written for women in this age bracket, while men at that age flourish and have great careers.

I don't buy into you're on the slag heap when you're 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or whatever.

Ageism is interesting for me because I've been playing someone in my 40s since I was 20 or so, but I have experienced it. I've been lucky in that I haven't had to play the ingenue and feel that slip away.

So many people put older women out to pasture.

I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.

Men have the power in everything: journalism, acting, direction; in banks, finances, schools. All the laws are made by men. Men think that women, when they're not able to procreate any more, become old. That is not true - they are still amazing!

Every interview I've done since I've turned 40, the journalist will say, 'So, isn't it amazing? Your career should be over, but you're still working. Why do you think you have found a career at a time when a lot of women are slowing down?'

When I think of the name 'Joyce' I think of a grandma or an old chubby Mrs. Claus.

There aren't many roles that are interesting if you're a 40-year-old woman, unless you're Julia Roberts or Cate Blanchett.

In Hollywood, you play a mom, and the next thing you know, you're on 'The Golden Girls.' They age you so fast.

It's still acceptable for male presenters to appear elderly but not their female counterparts. You will never find an old woman and a young man presenting combo.

I want women, especially young women, to create a world where your success is not based on being young.